Caller identification is known in the art as a means of providing information on a telephone receiving an incoming call. The information provided may include caller's name or phone number. Although the party receiving the call may identify the caller before answering the phone using caller identification (CallerID) services, the caller may need to relocate to the vicinity of the telephone in order to examine the local display and identify the calling party. This may cause great frustration to telephone users because their close proximity to the telephone may be required in order to capitalize on CallerID services.
In order to alleviate this problem, CallerID information identifying an incoming call has been displayed on a television set. In this way, the called party would not have to interrupt his/her television viewing when the phone rang. If the called party was engrossed in a television program and the phone rang, the called party could remain in place in front of the television set and continue watching. A small display on the television screen would appear after the first ring of the phone indicating the caller's name and/or phone number. The called party could then decide if the call was worth answering or not. The advantage of this system is that the called party, if watching television, does not have to relocate from the television to the telephone to check the identity of the calling party and therefore does not have to interrupt viewing his/her favorite television show. If the incoming call is from an undesired party, the called party could continue watching television uninterrupted. Likewise, CallerID information may be transmitted to other designated appliances such that the called party may be apprised of the identity of the caller at various sites throughout the local region even if the called party is not in the immediate vicinity of the telephone.
However, such systems have been used for receiving PSTN calls received over standard telephone switching networks and have been unable to effectively manage calls received over other networks such as wireless or cable networks or calls received via hybrid fiber coax, for example.
Therefore, a need exists in the art for an intelligent network interface device for callerID multicasting of calls received through cable or wireless networks in addition to PSTN calls.
A further need exists in the art to provide a caller identification method and system for multicasting caller identification information received from calls over cable, wireless or PSTN networks such that a called party could receive caller identification information from any of such calls over a wide range of locations or end devices while performing a wide range of activities.